White and Gold or Blue and Black - what did you see

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Even stranger. I woke up yesterday and saw white and gold. I went to the Gym and saw white and gold on ESPN, the local news and etc.

I got home and saw Blue and Black. My wife saw Blue and Black. She has another datapoint now in the investigation on my sanity.
 

HellDiverUK

Active Member
Jul 16, 2014
290
52
28
47
In my defense, I have a few issues with colour, grays often seem brown, and I've serious issues differentiating green and blue.
 

Boddy

Active Member
Oct 25, 2014
772
144
43
I see both white and gold & blue and black.
I studied photography, photos taken in shade can have a bluish hue (sky), under incandescent bulb gives off red/orange light (our brains compensate and it looks normal) & fluorescent bulbs give off a greenish hue. Try taking photos with old 'film' camera. Digital cameras adjust hue and can be biased towards certain tones. My Samsung Galaxy SII makes things warmer, hence it really exaggerates anything reddish and gives pictures a reddish/orange hue. Colour blindness could affect what someone sees. Ultimately, it is our brain that interperates the sensory input.
 

NeverDie

Active Member
Jan 28, 2015
307
27
28
USA
What?!?! It's simpler than that. Most monitors aren't color calibrated, so for starters we're all seeing different stimulus images. You know this is true if you've ever compared different brand TV's sitting close to one another in a store. Moreover, if you're looking at the image on an LCD monitor, which pair of colors you see can depend on the angle you're looking at it. Viewed dead-on it looks white-and-gold, and at an angle (tilt the screen back if you're on a laptop) it's blue-and-black. Or, at least that's how it works on my laptop.

Would we all agree on the color pair if our eyeballs were in the exact same spot looking at the exact same screen? In this case I'm guessing yes, at least for those who have normal vision.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Boddy

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Most monitors aren't color calibrated, so for starters we're all seeing different stimulus images
Here is an interesting one. I saw white and gold this morning. I then use my Spyder to calibrate my two HP ZR30w's. No change. I then started moving the image around the screen cutting off the over exposed right side (for example) and it started looking increasingly blue and black until I now see blue and black.

Crazy.
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
1,450
789
113


Alt txt "This white-balance illusion hit so hard because it felt like someone had been playing through the Monty Hall scenario and opened their chosen door, only to find there was unexpectedly disagreement over whether the thing they'd revealed was a goat or a car."
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
I still see white and gold (how about this for an OT thread).
As a former electronic retoucher, I see cyan-tinged blue and a muddy, slightly orange brown... and a terrible photography job overall. There is definitely zero black and zero white in this image!!!

I suspect that some people mentally color-correct the light blue to white, which shifts the muddy orange to gold, while others mentally color correct the muddy orange-brown to black, which then shifts the light blue to a strong blue. While all of us mentally color-correct all the time, this photo is really odd since you can reasonably perform either mental color correction and come up with a workable picture.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Boddy and Chuckleb

NeverDie

Active Member
Jan 28, 2015
307
27
28
USA
As a former electronic retoucher, I see cyan-tinged blue and a muddy, slightly orange brown... and a terrible photography job overall. There is definitely zero black and zero white in this image!!!

I suspect that some people mentally color-correct the light blue to white, which shifts the muddy orange to gold, while others mentally color correct the muddy orange-brown to black, which then shifts the light blue to a strong blue. While all of us mentally color-correct all the time, this photo is really odd since you can reasonably perform either mental color correction and come up with a workable picture.
Ultimately, it's got to be something like what you said. This video sort-of explains it (takes only a minute if you jump ahead to the 8:00 minute mark):

It attributes the effect to how your brain interprets shadows, and it gives a different example to illustrate.

It's a fun effect. The dress image must be near a a threshhold as to how our brains interprets color in shadows.

That said, if you're only able to see it one way, why would that be? Is it the color calibration on your monitor, or overall brightness level, and/or something else (maybe even the level of background lighting)? When I look at it on my living room HDTV, it only looks blue-black, no matter from where or what angle I look at it, or even if I move it around the screen (Patrick's technique) to block portions of the image. Or perhaps the image size (bigger on the HDTV) is also a factor? On my laptop, I can see it either way. I'm not sure I've yet seen a complete explanation of all the factors that might be involved (or ruled-out) in the dress image.
 
Last edited:

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
As a former electronic retoucher, I see cyan-tinged blue and a muddy, slightly orange brown... and a terrible photography job overall. There is definitely zero black and zero white in this image!!!

I suspect that some people mentally color-correct the light blue to white, which shifts the muddy orange to gold, while others mentally color correct the muddy orange-brown to black, which then shifts the light blue to a strong blue. While all of us mentally color-correct all the time, this photo is really odd since you can reasonably perform either mental color correction and come up with a workable picture.
Some people have better color discrimination than others, probably for both genetic reasons (bi, tri, tetrachromats) and training. Here is a decent online version of the test:

Color Test - Online Color Challenge | X-Rite

I wonder if bi and trichromats, who have a harder time discriminating different yellow levels, are more likely to see black as the dress color. But then why am I wasting time thinking about this when Patrick has four NVMe drives waiting for a chassis!